The Seychelles remained a well-kept secret for many centuries. Separated from the earlier centres of civilization by vast distances, the islands were largely untouched until the 7th century when the Arabs in the dhows began their southerly ventures down the east of Africa and on to India. 

Today the islands owe much to isolation for keeping their natural environment in tact. Al Mas Udi, a great Arab historian and traveller chronicled the Maldives and the high islands beyond in 915.  What this referred to were probably the mountainous granite islands that make up the central Seychelles. Aldabra, the huge giant land tortoise atoll may have been named by the Arabs from the word Al-khadra meaning the green.

The Arabs who introduced the coconut along the eastern African coast may have done the same in the Seychelles as this palm was already abundant when the Europeans arrived and later turned the crop into an important export. The 16^th century was a time of discovery for the Portuguese who made the earliest record of the islands in 1502 when Vasco da Gama discovered the Amirantes Islands on his way to India. In 1544 the archipelago first appeared on Portuguese maps under the name of The Seven Sisters and The Brothers. 

In the 18^th century French navigators took over the exploration of the archipelago. On his way to Mauritius, Lazare Picault spotted the island of Mahe in 1741. After he told Mahe de Labourdonnais the governor of Mauritius of his discovery, he was sent back in 1742 and named it after the governor who had sent him.

In 1756, Nicholas Morphey took possession of Mahe and 7 other islands in the arc-hipelago in the name of the King of France.

The first settlers of the Seychelles made up just over 2-dozen Europeans, Indians and slaves landed on St. Anne Island on August 27, 1770.  A year later a second group of settlers started a spice plantation at Anse Royale but the cinnamon, clove nutmeg and other plants were deliberately destroyed by fire in 1780 to prevent them from falling into enemy hands after the colonys administrator mistakenly thought that an approaching ship was British.

From 1794 for the next 13 years, the islands changed hands seven times between the French and the British. In 1811 after a series of naval battles, the British succeeded in occupying the Seychelles. The French administrator, Quau de Quincy, was allowed to stay even after Seychelles became British.  With this liberal attitude the colony maintained much of its French character.